“Evolution without Natural Selection”
“Evolution without Natural Selection”
复制标题
“没有自然选择的进化”
DOI：
10.1038/033100a0
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发表时间：
1885
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Charles. Dixon
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Charles. Dixon
尽管我相信评论家的话应该是最终的，但我毫不犹豫地写下了以下几点评论，评论我的小作品《没有自然选择的进化》，这本书发表在11月12日的《自然》杂志上(第26页)。我的书被人以一种奇怪的方式误解了，因此我努力把事情讲清楚，不偏不倚，占用了您宝贵的篇幅，为此我深表歉意。首先，罗曼斯先生对我这本书的书名提出了批评；但为什么，很难猜测。我冒昧地断言，正如任何公正的读者必须承认的那样，它所包含的问题的十分之九试图说明进化的运作，而不是任何自然的选择性过程；因此，我绝对否认我只保留了一些我归因于其他机构的零星细节。我还可以说，我有一个理由，我认为一个非常好的理由，就是我的言论只限于鸟类。如果我选择涵盖更广泛的领域，我就可以证明，这些罗曼斯略带轻蔑地称之为“零碎东西”的东西，绝不只适用于鸟类，而是适用于自然历史的其他所有部门的物种。罗曼斯接着说，“达尔文假说的精髓在于，它只试图解释那些明显有目的的变异，或适应性变异；因此，如果任何变异被认为是非适应性的，那么它就不可能是自然选择造成的。”正是如此。当自然选择完全不能做到这一点时，我曾试图由其他机构来解释，正是这种我可以称之为非目的性变异的巨大数量，构成了如此众多物种之间的分界线。我坚决否认，我曾说过，甚至是推断过，这些变异“在很大程度上是罕见的”，就像罗曼尼斯让他的评论的读者猜测的那样。所有习惯于研究大系列标本的博物学家都很清楚，有大量物种的排名是基于它们与优势类型的微小差异。我花了五年时间在数万个标本中辛勤工作，才得出了我这本小书中所表达的结论；在我看来，没有一个博物学家有资格在没有这样的学徒经历的情况下就这些主题进行写作。这就是为什么，作为一名专家，我将自己局限于鸟类作为我的例子。面对我努力记录的一系列重要事实，像罗曼斯先生这样有声望的博物学家说，这些事实可以自由地呈现给反达尔文主义者，这似乎很奇怪。为什么是“反达尔文主义者”，罗曼斯先生？除了进化论者(大多数进化论者肯定都是达尔文主义者)，没有人会重视这些“微不足道的变化”，以及由此产生的特定形式的融合。罗曼斯小心翼翼地指出，达尔文自己也承认，如果这些琐碎的特定字符“在与生命的斗争中真的没有相当大的重要性，它们就不可能通过自然选择来改变或形成”。现在，也许可以毫不夸张地说，至少三分之一的已知已知物种绝对依赖于这些“微不足道的具体特征”。如果它们不是通过自然选择进化出来的，我认为其他和自然选择一样强大的因素在起作用。我这本小书的目的是试图解释它们。
BELIEVING as I do that the words of a reviewer should be final, it is with no small amount of hesitation that I pen the following few remarks on the review of my little work entitled “Evolution without Natural Selection,” which appeared in NATURE of November 12 (p. 26). The curious way in which my book has been misunderstood, and my consequent endeavour to put matters in a clear and impartial light, must be my apology for taking up your valuable space. In the first place, Mr. Romanes finds fault with the title of my book; but why, it is hard to conjecture. I venture to assert that nine-tenths of the matter it contains attempt to illustrate the operation of evolution without any natural selective process, as any impartial reader must admit; consequently, I absolutely deny that I only reserved a few odds and ends of small detail which I ascribed to other agencies. I might also state that I had a reason, and I think a very good one, in confining my remarks exclusively to birds. Had I elected to cover a wider area, I could have shown that these “odds and ends,” as Mr. Romanes somewhat contemptuously calls them, do not by any means exclusively apply to birds, but to species in every other department of natural history. Mr. Romanes goes on to say that “It is the very essence of the Darwinian hypothesis that it only seeks to explain the apparently purposive variations, or variations of an adaptive kind; and, therefore, if any variations are taken to be non-adaptive,exhypothesithey cannot have been due to natural selection.” Precisely. And it was the immense amount of what I may call non-purposive variation which forms the line of demarcation between such vast numbers of species that I have attempted to explain by other agencies when natural selection utterly fails to do so. I most emphatically deny that I ever said, or even inferred, that these variations are “for the most part rare,” as Mr. Romanes leads the reader of his review to suppose. All naturalists who are in the habit of working through large series of specimens are well aware of the immense number of species whose claim to rank as such is based upon their slight variation from a dominant type. It took me five years' hard work amongst tens of thousands of specimens to arrive at the conclusions expressed in my little book; and, in my opinion, no naturalist is qualified to write on these subjects without serving such an apprenticeship. That is why, as a specialist, I confined myself to birds alone for my examples. In the face of the array of important facts which I endeavoured to chronicle, it seems strange for a naturalist of such standing as Mr. Romanes to state that these facts “may be freely presented to the anti-Darwinians.” Why “anti-Darwinians,” Mr. Romanes? No one but an evolutionist (and most evolutionists are surely Darwinians) would attach any importance to these “trivial variations,” and consequent intergradation of specific forms. Mr. Romanes is careful to point out how Darwin himself admits that if these trivial specific characters are “really of no considerable importance in the struggle for life, they could not be modified or formed through natural selection.” Now probably it is no exaggeration to say that at least one-third of the known recognised species absolutely rest on these “trivial specific characters.” If they have not been evolved by natural selection, I maintain that other and as equally potent agents as natural selection have been at work. The object of my little book was to try and explain them.